In many activities, it is important to protect the eye against impact from a number of, for example, high-velocity projectiles which may be found in a person's environment. For example, many sporting activities, such as handball, racketball, squash and the like, are played in a confined area, and the handballs, racketballs, etc., may bounce off a myriad of surfaces, including walls, floor and ceiling, which define the area, and approach a participant from any of a number of directions.
Many arrangements have been developed to provide protection to the eye against such impact. In some protective arrangements, the eye protection is integral with elements, such as helmets, which serve to protect other parts of the head against impact. In such arrangements, typically bars may be unidirectionally arrayed or arrayed in a grid fashion over the wearer's eyes to protect them against impact. One problem with such devices is that the bars typically tend to obscure the wearer's vision at least in some viewing directions of the wearer's field of view, which can be detrimental particularly in activities in which the projectiles can move quite rapidly.
In addition, typically helmet-type devices are often uncomfortable, expensive and generally unnecessary in a number of sporting activities. In those activities, other protective arrangements, such as goggles or safety glasses, may find greater utility. Generally, goggles or safety glasses make use of lenses made of plastic or other clear material, with the lenses being mounted in frames which direct the impact force to areas of the wearer's face such as the cheeks and forehead. The lenses may the used to assure that the wearer's field of view will not be obscured by protective bars which are used in the helmet arrangements described above, and they may also be used to provide vision correction for the wearer. However, generally the lenses may not be able to withstand impact forces as high as those which can be withstood by the protective bars, since they may shatter or be forced out of their frames at lower impact forces. This is particularly true of corrective lenses, since the manufacturing process for spectacles including corrective lenses typically requires that the lenses be inserted into a frame rather than being integrally molded with the frame. In addition, goggles and safety glasses often direct the impact force to generally limited areas of the wearer's face, which can lead to discomfort or injury in those areas.